"Reviresco" - "I Grow Strong Again"

Message by Susan McEwen
Delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Pittsfield, Maine on January 31, 1999

My father used to say from his pulpit that his best sermons were the ones in which he preached to himself, and my mother, who had a lifetime of agreeing or disagreeing with his points, would, for her private reasons, respond with an enthusiastic “Amen!”, which usually left their congregation to wonder what may have fostered such a vigorous response from his spouse.  Similarly, today,  I have a message to myself and I invite you to share in the hearing of it, with the humble wish that something said will strike a responsive chord.

Again, about my father...over the years, he seemed to gradually move from the fundamentalist Christian fire and brimstone certainties to the later life statements and recognition of the need for hope. One of his hopeful preachments is now engraved on his tombstone as he had become known for this pronouncement “We are an Easter people!”   WE ARE AN EASTER PEOPLE.  REVIRESCO.  I grow strong again. This theme suits us very well in a number of ways today, January 31st, 1999,  in the midst of the winter season.  We have been falling on the ice more than we want to recall despite our bodily reminders.  We have broken pipes and the damage from the ice jams on our high roofs. We have extra heat bills. And, the snow is dirty, not that fluffy clean white stuff in which we can pleasure our senses.. And,  it has been just too cold outside to really enjoy being outdoors.  But, we willingly live in the North.  We know and love the fact that something very beautiful is coming or going to happen Yes. we will grow green again which, by the way is also a possible translation of Latin word reviresco...I grow strong again or I grow green again or I come to life again or I am restored to life again or I am revived or recovered or renewed in vigor.  (reviviscco re and vivo) The temperate climates that have all four season, in winter,  remind me of an ego defense mechanism we often use without knowing the clinical jargon.  To me, winter is like adaptive regression in the service of the ego.  To explain, according to Eda G. Goldstein in her book Ego Psychology and Social Work Practice, (specifically in Chapter 3 The Ego and Its Functions (p. 55)),  the concept of regression serving adaptive ends means that the conscious brain activity of the ego has the ability to permit itself to relax the hold on and relationship to reality and to experience aspects of the self that are ordinarily inaccessible when one is engaged in concentrated attention to reality. From this relaxed hold the mind then emerges with increased adaptive capacity as a result of creative integration during the relaxed state.  For example, a individual working on a term paper ( or a UU message) that is due the next day may become increasingly fatigued and, try as he/she may, the person is unable to draw the conclusions necessary to finish the assignment.  So, the individual decides to take a nap from which he/she emerges with the “brainstorm” that permits the completion of the complex task.  Another familiar example is when a father or mother permits him/herself to give up, temporarily, his/her adherence to logical, organized speech and thinking and talks baby talk to his/her infant.  The Dad or Mom empathizes with the child’s urgent needs to communicate and even though these needs are not part of the adult experience speaks baby talk..  It has been seen that adaptive regression in the service of the ego is a an important ego function that enables the individual to move forward, to cope effectively or to exercise creativity, to grow strong.  Also, in biology, there are  processes take place without our doing anything or seeing anything, that are the relaxation or winter slumbering from which we will see the emergence of creativity... the roses in the wintertime remind us today that YES WE WILL GROW GREEN AGAIN.  I’ll return to nature again first ...by now, I am sure you could be questioning why the Latin, after all, no one speaks Latin.  It is a dead language.  This was said to me numerous times while I persisted in studying all 4 years of it in high school.  The peer pressure of those adolescent years included, among other things, the taunts that go with studying Latin ...something like “what a nerd, egghead, what kind of class trip is that? looking at destroyed buildings?  You gonna be a priest?”  I did attempt to assert myself with a loud “Latina est viva!” Latin is alive.. Latin is alive chant but I admit it was not very convincing. The dead language hung over me until the English vocabulary sections of college entrance exams were aced by the Latina discipuli (students of Latin).  The basic truth is that something appearing to be dead can yet be alive ... may be in a different form! But alive, nonetheless.  So, for fun, I challenge you to discover what I know ..that our English dictionary can rarely pass a single page without a word derived from Latin.  And our usage continues in what is now everyday Latin.  Probably thanks to the mystery writers and other media sources, we can readily throw around Latin phrases like “rigor mortis” when our goldfish dies or “corpus delecti” is familiar in lawyer stories because there is no murder if there is no body and so on...writ of habeas corpus, guardian ad litem, etc.  Or the word my husband reminded me of...Ignoramus.  I did look this up to be sure and, yes, he was right.  It is Latin and literally it means  “we do not know” however it seems we have made a noun out of it.

But as we see the ancient language grow still as root,  I call your attention to the back of this Order of Service where you see the crest of my father’s family, the clan MacEwen.  These distinctive Scottish people chose a family motto that resounds in defiance of death  Reviresco...I grow strong again.  Now, every family has a story about its beginning so we McEwens do with  Mac which means son of Ewen (or the Anglo Evan).  The descendants of Mac Ewen have lived up to a perfectly hopeful and proudly defiant motto which the crest you see and I wear today announces.  This history is of a clan cut down in battle, losing its lands and being scattered across the world, mostly to what was known, at the time as the new world, where obviously they grew strong again again in the melting pot forms of America.. Looking at the crest we see a tree cut down to a stump... not dead but beginning to sprout new life from the old and indeed it grows green again.  Now, there is nothing new about this idea.  In ancient scripture of the Old Testament, Isaiah 6: verses 11-13 in the The Living Bible translation it reads “Then I said , “ Lord, how long will it be before they are ready to listen?  And he replied, “Not until their cities are destroyed - without a person left- and the whole country is an utter wasteland, and they are all taken away as slaves to other countries far away, and all the land of Israel lies deserted!  Yet, a tenth - a remnant - will survive; and though Israel is invaded again and again and destroyed, yet Israel will be like a tree cut down whose stump still lives to grow again.”  Life in another form happens frequently.  In the King James version of the Bible, I read in  Judges 14:12, of  Samson, having seen life come from death but not telling anyone of his experience,  gave a riddle to Philistines saying “Out of the eater, something to eat. out of the strong, something sweet” What was he talking about? Look up the answer if you wish but suffice to say reviresco.

Spiritually, we cannot continue in our life journey if we cannot embrace the truth and hope that we always grow strong again.  William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, wrote in his book In Darkest England and the Way Out that basic physical needs must be met before preaching to save souls.  Writing in the mid 1800’s, he eloquently stated to his followers “But we who call ourselves by the name of Christ (Christians) are not worthy to profess to be his disciples until we have set an open door (hope) before the least and worst of these (people) who are yet imprisoned in a horrible dungeon of misery and despair.”  In More than a Man Can Take (A Study of Job) by Professor Wesley Baker it is pointed out that we usually referred to suffering as what God does to us, and we ask why me? Wesley Baker states that essentially the Book of Job is not about suffering.  But about our response. The story flings all the hideous possibilities of earthly experience in Job’s face, then parades before him the majestic splendor of a God to whom the universe utterly belongs and who honors his children with an interrelationship of tender love and then says to Job “It’s your move.”  What are you gong to do?  Suffering , then, is the blackness of the ink on the engraved invitation to know the Creator and/or to know hope.  Reviresco. (p.129)  In Why Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner (p. 147) we end up with the same idea. He says  in the final analysis the question of why bad things happen to good people translates itself into some very different questions, no longer why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what do we intent to do now that it has happened”  Grow strong again.  Like the resurrection of Jesus Christ after death.  Like Uncle Tom getting the Victory.  Like Moses dealing with his identity and leadership challenge we talked about in the children’s focus and heard in the Prince of Egypt of music. Like Job responding to his circumstances  Like the music of the offertory Chariots of Fire where Olympic athletes run the good race, fight the good fight These are the messages that hope is necessary to grow strong again.

In the 20th century,  the late Dr. Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist who survived 3 grim years at the Nazi prison camps at Auschwitz and Dachau and  gained his freedom only  to learn that almost his entire family had been wiped out. Dr. Frankl observed that those who survived best were the individuals who retained hope...who could think of the future beyond the present horrible living. And who did not deny the present reality of opportunity to be humane despite the inhumanity.  Anyone who could not imagine the end of his “provisional existence” was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life and so quickly signs of spiritual decay would set in reducing him to an animalistic level...Man must always have a meaning, a hope in the knowledge that life renews itself constantly.  A person who becomes aware of the responsibility he or she bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for his/her return or to an unfinished work not to be completed by anyone else will never be able to throw away his/her life.  He/She knows the why for his/her existence and will be able to bear almost any how (p. 126).  Furthermore, a young woman Dr. Frankl interviewed at Aushwitz knew she was going to die in the next few days.  Yet, she was cheerful.  Dr. Frankl inquired and she said “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard, because in my former life, I was spoiled and I did  not take spiritual accomplishment seriously.”  Pointing through a window of her hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.”  Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms.  “I often talk to this tree,” she said.  Dr. Frankl was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words.  Was she delirious?  Having occasional hallucinations?  Anxiously, he asked her if the tree answered.  She said, “It said to me, ‘I am here - I am here - I am life, eternal life.”  I say Reviresco. Hope.

Nature has this impact on us if we allow ourselves to sense this.  Natural processes keep on going no matter what. Laws of nature tell us life goes on  Biologists have scientific words like photosynthesis, symbiosis, parasitism, propagation, fermentation, etc.  All processes that work to maintain life, create life or regenerate life.  Today, the choir sang the words of song #344 “nature knows that deep beneath the winter snow a rose lies curled and hums its song” and “from deep despair and perished things a green shoot always always springs and something always always sings”.  And so we sing in closing a benediction blessing song of Bob Dylan’s.  In our going from this place, we know that we can count on eternal renewal and can sing a song about growing strong again and staying forever young.

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